			       OpenCOBOL
		       http://www.opencobol.org/
		http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/

OpenCOBOL is an open-source COBOL compiler, which translates COBOL
programs to C code and compiles it using GCC.

This package contains the following subdirectories:

    cobc        COBOL compiler
    libcob      COBOL run-time library
    bin		COBOL driver program
    lib         static library and common headers
    config      configuration files
    po          international messages
    texi        Texinfo files
    tests       Test suite

All programs except those in lib and libcob are distributed under
the GNU General Public License.  See COPYING for details.

Programs in lib and libcob are distributed under the GNU Lesser
General Public License.  See COPYING.LIB for details.

See AUTHORS for the author of each file.

Requirements
============

OpenCOBOL requires the following external libraries to be installed:

 ** NOTE - all the following packages are normally part of a Linux
    distribution. Cygwin also has these as installable packages.
    ALWAYS install the distro packages when available !!
 **

  o GNU MP (libgmp) 4.1.2 or later
    http://gmplib.org
    *** Note - Recent Linux distributions have runtime
	AND development packages; BOTH are required ***

    libgmp is used to implement decimal arithmetic.

    GNU MP is distributed under GNU Lesser General Public License.


  *** Note for following - libltdl is NOT needed when installing on Linux
      or Windows (including Cygwin and MingW)
  ***
  o GNU Libtool (libltdl)
    http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/libtool.html


    libltdl is used to implement dynamic CALL statements.

    GNU Libtool is distributed under GNU Lesser General Public License.

The following libraries are required when :

Indexed-Sequential file I/O is used

  ** NOTE - all the following packages are normally part of a Linux
     distribution. Cygwin also has these as installable packages
     ALWAYS install the distro packages when available !!
  **
  o Berkeley DB (libdb) 1.85 or later (runtime AND development)
    http://www.sleepycat.com/

    Recommended is version 4.x as 1.85 is known to have problems.
    ** NOTE **
    Linux distros usually carry the runtime AND development 
    rpm/deb package versions of 4.x. It is recommended to use these
    where available.

    * NOTE *
	     Use the distro rpm's where available (4.x - runtime + devel)
	     The following NOTE(S) ONLY apply to DB < =4.1

    * NOTE *
	     The BDB version 4.0 was never officially supported from
	     sleepycat but, unfortunately, found it's way into Linux
	     releases. Install a newer version.

    * NOTE * If you are generating BDB yourself and the BDB 
	     version is <= 4 (and version < 1), you need to specify
	     --enable-compat185 as a minimum to the BDB configure.
	     BDB does NOT have the usual install path of either
	     /usr or /usr/local. Therefore, it is recommended to
	     specify --prefix=/usr/local to the configure.

    libdb is used to implement indexed file I/O and SORT/MERGE.

    Berkeley DB is distributed under the original BSD License (1.85)
    or their own open-source license (2.x or later).  Note that, as
    of 2.x, if you linked your software with Berkeley DB, you must
    distribute the source code of your software along with your
    software, or you have to pay royalty to Sleepycat Software, Inc.

SCREEN I/O is used or extended ACCEPT/DISPLAY is used
  ** NOTE - all the following packages are normally part of a Linux/Unix
     distribution. Cygwin also has these as installable packages
     ALWAYS install the distro packages when available !!
  **
  o Unix curses (Not Linux/Cygwin/MingW)
  or
  o Ncurses (libncurses) 5.2 or later
    http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html

    libncurses is used to implement SCREEN SECTION and extended
    ACCEPT/DISPLAY.

    Ncurses is distributed under a BSD style license.

Installation
============

** NOTE **
Due to deficiencies in the tools used to prepare
OpenCOBOL (autoconf/automake/libtool), it is
NOT generally possible to use path names with
spaces embedded within them (Mainly Cygwin/MingW/Windows ports).
 
To generate/install OpenCOBOL :

**************************************

    ./configure
    make

Here you may run
    make check
to run a series of OpenCOBOL test programs (must do!)
This MUST succeed - If not, please report.

    make install

** Note ** - On Linux systems, if you are installing for the
   -first- time, you may need to run "ldconfig" (as root).
   In fact, it does not hurt if you always do this.

** Note ** - On some Red Hat (Fedora) installations and
   possibly other Linux distros, /usr/local/lib
   is NOT automatically searched at runtime. 
   Edit /etc/ld.so.conf and add /usr/local/lib to the file.
   Rerun "ldconfig".

You may optionally perform a series of COBOL85 tests.
See tests/cobol85/README
It is recommended that you perform this test.

**************************************

If you think you have a problem or just want to
record the make output, just redirect the output thus :
    make 1>mymake.log 2>&1
    make install 1>myinstall.log 2>&1

**************************************

You can get back to a clean installation status by running :
    make clean

**************************************

The "make install" will default to "/usr/local" as
the install path. You may override this by specifying
"--prefix=<your install path>" to the "./configure"
command.

***********************************************************

The following is only interseting for advanced use,
A normal user should not have recourse to use these
options.

There are the following configure options:

  --with-cc=<cc>		Specify C compiler command used by cobc
				Do not specify this unless you know what
				you are doing!

  --with-db1			Use Berkeley DB 1.85 (libdb1/libdb-1.85)
				This overrides --with-db/--without-db

  --with-db			Use Berkeley DB 3.0 or later (libdb)
				This is the default

  --without-db			Do not use Berkeley DB
				You will not be able to use SORT/indexed I/O

  --with-lfs64			Use large file system for file I/O
				This is the default

  --without-lfs64		Do not use large file system I/O

  --with-dl			Use the system dynamic linker instead of ltdl
				This is the default
				(Note on Windows, native loading is used)

  --without-dl			Use ltdl for dynamic program loading

  --with-patch-level=<n>	Set internal patch level to n (default 0)

  --with-varseq=<n>		Define the format for variable length sequential
				files. For values of 0, 1 and 2, four bytes are
				written preceeding each record. The format of
				these four bytes for values of 0, 1, 2 is
				as follows :
				n = 0 (default)
					The first 2 bytes are the record length
					in big-endian order. This is compatible
					with mainframe. Bytes 3 and 4 are set
					to binary 0.
				n = 1
					The 4 bytes are the record length in
					big-endian order.
				n = 2
					The 4 bytes are the record length in
					native machine order (int).
					(This was previously the default)

				For the value of 3, two bytes are written
				preceeding each record :
				n = 3
					The first 2 bytes are the record length
					in big-endian order. The record follows
					immediately after beginning at byte 3.

  --enable-debug		Add '-g' debug option to make


Development
===========

If you are a developer, consider building the latest OpenCOBOL
from the CVS repository.

You need to install the following extra packages with specified
minimum version before changing/building OpenCOBOL:

For compiling :
  o Bison 1.875
  o Flex 2.5.4

If you reconfigure and/or prepare a distribution
  o Autoconf 2.59
  o Automake 1.9.6
  o Libtool 1.5.24
  o m4 1.4.2
  o Gettext 0.14.1
  o Texinfo 4.6 (For makeinfo)

After checking out the latest source from the repository, you
are ready to run configure.
If you modify top-level configure.ac or Makefile.am in any directory,
then you will need to run "autoreconf -I m4" to regenerate the
necessary files.
